I happened to find this interview article several months ago, and just on 5 November 2012 (first anniversary) I read it again. I do not think that Dr. Daniel Pipes likes this content, but I do think how not only comical but also dangerous it has been for the general public to have a tendency of making irresponsible judgements on him for such a long time without trying to understand the reasons why he thinks so.
As for my quoting Dr. Daniel Pipes, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20080228)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20090503)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120111)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120113)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120428)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120601)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20121011) (Lily)
Cyprus Mail（http://www.cyprus-mail.com/node/82744）
An air of conspiracy, 5 November 2011
by Theo Panayides
An air of conspiracy, Daniel Pipes, Living Known for stirring public opinion in America and questioning whether Barack Obama was a Muslim, Daniel Pipes was in Cyprus recently where he described himself to THEO PANAYIDES as a ‘simple conservative’
Two things are immediately apparent when meeting Daniel Pipes. The first is how tall he is, tall and imposing with his trim beard and natty suit-and-tie as we shake hands in the lobby of the Hilton Park in Nicosia. The second is how softly he speaks, softly enough that I crane forward to catch the words, and ask him to repeat himself a couple of times. It’s not just the voice, it’s also the body language. He tends to huddle, giving everything he says a conspiratorial air. He also tends to look down, at least in interview mode; though the eyes, when they look at you, have a penetrating glare under thick eyebrows.
The soft-spoken style is unexpected, given his reputation. Based on the vitriol hurled against him; Me: “You’ve been called a racist”; Daniel: “I’ve been called lots of things” – I expected a monster, or at least a ranting loon. His brushes with controversy are a matter of public record. When the University of Toronto invited him to speak in 2005, several professors and students signed a letter of protest attacking his alleged “long record of xenophobic, racist and sexist speech that goes back to 1990” (the lecture went ahead anyway). His nomination to the board of the United States Institute of Peace by President Bush in 2003 triggered a filibuster to block the appointment in the US Senate (Bush sidestepped the Senators with a so-called recess appointment). Outside official channels, the name-calling gets even blunter. A website called Information Clearing House – motto: “News You Won’t Find on CNN” – branded him “a rabid Zionist and unapologetic racist”. Another website called FAIR (“Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting”) named him among the “Dirty Dozen” leading American Islamophobes.
How does he deal with that kind of criticism? “I don’t engage in vitriol like that, ever,” he points out, sipping orange juice and eating muffins in quick, birdlike bites as he talks in staccato bursts. “It’s weakness on the part of those who do it. It’s a back-handed compliment, in the sense that they’re paying all this attention to me”. Besides, he says, he’s used to persecution – or at least isolation – from his time in college, specifically Harvard in the 60s. Born in 1949 to a “mildly practising” Jewish family in Boston – his dad is a well-known historian, specialising in Russia – Daniel’s politics were somewhat vague till his late teens, when two things happened. The first was the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, a huge formative event “in terms of focusing on the Middle East and being interested in the issues there”. The second was going to university, initially to study Mathematics, during the whole late-60s ferment.
“That was the beginning of the strong shift to the Left,” he recalls. “And I rejected that… so I was a conservative. And that was also a formative experience, in that I was extremely isolated”. East Coast Jewish boys from academic families weren’t supposed to think like this: “People who were like me were very much on the Left. So it was a political education to have this isolation, and yet persist in my views”. Oddly enough, Daniel spoke at his 40th class reunion just a couple of weeks before his visit to Cyprus – only to discover that he’s still out of sync with his Harvard ex-classmates. I recall a line from a Harvard Magazine interview he gave in 2005, when he claimed to have “the simple politics of a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic”. He worked in academia for a while, got a PhD in Early Islamic History – having switched from Maths to Arabic after a trip to the Sinai Desert – and taught till his mid 30s, but it’s fair to say he never completely belonged. For the past 25 years he’s been active in think-tanks, notably the Middle East Forum whose slogan has a truck-driver simplicity: “Promoting American interests”.
Why did he reject the blandishments of the counter-culture, all those years ago? “I think the reason was travel,” he replies. “The predominant sense among my peers was one of disappointment” – college kids finding out that America wasn’t as perfect as they’d been told throughout their childhoods – whereas “I, having travelled, saw the United States as not perfect, sure, but pretty good”. He’d wandered indiscriminately as a youngster, “just to see the world” and maybe find some purpose in his life, visiting France, Switzerland, West Africa, the Middle East. He even came to Cyprus in 1969, then again in 1972 – but didn’t return for nearly 40 years, his visit in early October including a lecture at the Cyprus Centre for International and European Affairs titled “What Future for US-Turkey Relations?”.
Needless to say, that lecture was only part of his purpose in coming here. He’s “taking information about Cyprus,” he explains, meeting people and getting briefed on issues – above all the natural-gas situation, which of course is why a compulsive Israel-watcher (or Israel-booster) like Daniel Pipes cares about our island in the first place.
“There was the Greece-Turkey-Cyprus triangle that existed on its own for decades and decades,” he explains, “with very little impact on the rest of the region. For someone like me, interested in the larger region” – he makes a dismissive gesture – “not of interest. I was here in ’69 and ’72, just looking around. Never came back, never wrote about it. Only last year, in July 2010, did I write about Cyprus for the first time”. The Cyprus problem is “integrated” now, says Daniel. It used to be an exception, the sole expansion of Turkey’s borders since the time of Ataturk. “From the US perspective, Turkey was an ally. Yes, there was the Cyprus” – he pauses – “unpleasantness, and we would say ‘We don’t like this’, and then we’d stop and talk about other things. Now, the Cyprus issue fits into a larger perspective of Turkish aggression. So it fits. Before, it was the exception”.
It doesn’t take much to read between the lines: now that Turkey’s locked horns with Israel it’s gone from ally to aggressor, so Cyprus is suddenly useful in establishing a pattern of aggression. We’re like a serial rapist’s previous victims, brought in after decades in the wilderness to bolster a new, high-profile case. Daniel Pipes’ own role in such cases is obscure, but he’s clearly influential. “Are you yourself more of an activist –?” I begin, but he interrupts.
“I’m not an activist,” he says. “I’m an intellectual. I take active positions, but I’m not someone who organises. Not for me. It’s a very viable skill, but it’s not mine. I’m a thinker”. Just last week, he points out, he wrote an article “asking if Turkey’s going rogue”. And of course there’s the Middle East Forum, busily “promoting American interests”.
What are those interests? Isn’t oil the only real US interest in the Middle East? He hesitates: “There are dangers to us – for example, radical Islam”. Yes, but isn’t radical Islam’s hatred of America due, in large part, to US interference in the name of foreign policy? Why don’t they just leave the region to fend for itself?
Another pause. “No,” he says in another staccato burst, still nibbling muffins. “The US is the strongest, most visible country in the world. And therefore the Islamists target it. Because of Hollywood. Because of the dollar. Because of blue jeans. Because of pop singers. Because of universities.”
But what about US policy? Iraq? Afghanistan? The Palestinians?
“Policies contribute to it,” he admits. “But let’s say the US pulled out completely from Afghanistan and Iraq, broke relations with Israel, and took a number of other steps that the Islamists would like. There would be two possible results of that. One, the Islamists say: ‘Thank you, we appreciate that, we’ll leave you alone now’. And the other would be to say: ‘Look – we have them on the run, let’s go after them even more’. I’m convinced it would be the latter.”
So he thinks it’s a clash of civilisations? The old Huntington thesis? But he shakes his head: “I think that’s a rather primitive understanding. I believe rather in a clash of civilisation and barbarism. Fascism was a form of barbarism, Communism was another, and now Islamism is a third.”
Daniel Pipes is warming to his theme now – and showing, perhaps, why his views attract so much opprobrium, though he makes it clear (and repeats it later, to make it even clearer) that he’s not against Islam per se, just a specific form of Islam. Still, those who disagree with his worldview may discern a tang of paranoia, especially when he talks about sharia (Islamic) law and the many Muslims trying to apply it in the West, “some through violence, some through more cautious, careful ways”. The latter are the more “challenging,” he adds – because “they look like normal people and act like normal people, but they have an agenda that’s very different and very dangerous”. It’s hard not to be reminded of the ‘Reds under the bed’ alarmism of Communist witch-hunts in the 1950s.
“It’s not me making this up,” insists Daniel. “If you pay close attention to them, it’s clear: they want to apply sharia, they want – in an American context – to replace the Constitution with the Koran. One sees that everywhere. The most dramatic case is the UK”. Suddenly, examples come tumbling out. A state-run primary school opens in “Oxford, England” with a halal kitchen. Hospitals eliminate Bibles from patients’ bedsides. A hospital in Scotland urges non-Muslim staff not to eat or drink during Ramadan, to avoid offending Muslims. An Islamist on trial asks the judge to bar Jews and Hindus from the jury, and the judge obliges. A swimming pool has special opening hours for Muslim women only. A pizza parlour is denied a liquor licence because it’s close to a mosque. “On and on and on,” he says darkly.
It’s entirely possible to debate this stuff – but we don’t have time, and besides I doubt we’d get very far. Daniel seems impervious to the notion that he’s touching a nerve with liberal audiences by spouting these opinions. “It’s not so much that it touches a nerve – it’s that there are these barbarians wanting to bring their ideas to us, and I’m one of those saying ‘No, we don’t want them!’” Those who attack him, he implies, must be crypto-Islamists themselves. He’s been totally engrossed in these subjects since the late 80s, when he wrote a book on the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and remains the kind of person who lives for his work – so much so that we barely get to talk about his personal life. He’s on his second marriage, with three daughters from the first one (the oldest is an internet consultant, the middle one a graphic designer, the third still in school). He travels a lot, mostly on business. He likes to exercise, and spend time with family. “But work is pretty intense,” he adds briskly. “Takes up a lot of time.”
How would Daniel Pipes describe himself? “Just a plain conservative,” he shrugs, speaking so softly I lean forward to listen. “I believe in individualism, and less government. I believe the US is a fine country. I believe in capitalism”. He seems calm enough, sitting in the Hilton Park with his glass of orange juice – so why does he push so many buttons? Why does he sound so extreme? Why is he so angry? But he frowns, giving it another of his long pauses:
“I’m not sure I’d agree with your characterisation of ‘angry’. I’m fighting in defence – intellectually fighting in defence – of the civilisation I’m part of. Not particularly angry about it”. He shakes his head, sounding almost philosophical. “It’s not an unpleasant undertaking. It has its unpleasant aspects, like being called names – but you get used to it. Not a bad life. Not complaining”. A last sip of juice, a nibble of muffin, and it’s on to the next meeting.
（End）
